The role of the air traffic controller in future air traffic management: an empirical study of active control versus passive monitoring

Proposals for air traffic management such as Free Flight call for a transfer of responsibility for separation between aircraft from air traffic controllers (ATCos) to pilots. Under many proposals, the role of the ATCo will change from one of active control to passive monitoring. The present study directly compared these types of control with respect to ATCo mental workload, conflict detection, and memory. Eighteen ATCos participated in an air traffic control simulation of Free Flight procedures under moderate and high traffic load. Dependent variables included accuracy and timeliness in detecting potential conflicts, accepting and handing off aircraft, mental workload (as assessed by a secondary task, heart rate variability, and subjective ratings), and memory for aircraft location. High traffic density and passive control both degraded conflict detection performance. Actual or potential applications of this research include the recommendation that designs for future air traffic management keep authority for separation of aircraft with the controller.     

城市交通控制系统综述

本文给出了城市交通控制系统的概述。对集中、分布及递阶式交通控制系统均进行了阐述。对各种控制方法、控制策略、典型的交通网络模型及算法也进行了讨论。作为一个综合的交通管理与控制体系,其经济效益是极其显著的。     

A Solution to the Problem of Assessing Aviation Safety by Simulation Modeling

Journal of Computer and Systems Sciences International - In connection with the planned increase in the intensity of air traffic worldwide, air traffic management systems need to be modernized. As...     

Strategies for designing distributed systems: case studies in the design of an air traffic management system

The air traffic management system in the USA is an example of a distributed problem-solving system. It has elements of both cooperative and competitive problem-solving. It includes complex organizations such as Flight Operations Centers, the FAA Air Traffic Control Systems Command Center (ATCSCC), and traffic management units at en route centers that focus on daily strategic planning, as well as individuals concerned more with immediate tactical decisions (such as air traffic controllers and pilots). The design of this system has evolved over time to rely heavily on the distribution of tasks and control authority in order to keep cognitive complexity manageable for any one individual operator, and to provide redundancy (both human and technological) to serve as a safety net to catch the slips or mistakes that any one person or entity might make. Within this distributed architecture, a number of different conceptual approaches have been applied to deal with cognitive complexity and to provide redundancy. These approaches can be characterized in terms of the strategy for distributing: (1) control or responsibility, (2) knowledge or expertise, (3) access to data, (4) processing capacity, and (5) goals and priorities. This paper will provide an abstract characterization of these alternative strategies for distributing work in terms of these 5 dimensions, and will illustrate and evaluate their effectiveness in terms of concrete realizations found within the National Airspace System.     

A generalized higher order neural network for aircraft recognition in a video docking system

In modern world of today where air traffic is continuously increasing and available space at the airports remains finite, there is a problem of safe docking of aircraft. The problem needs to be solved to ensure safe and smooth movement of aircraft, passengers and crew while making optimum utilization of available ground space. Without such systems having in place, accidents keep occurring due to human judgment errors. These accidents are causing loss of material costs and human injury. The importance of Video-based Docking Systems is continuously increasing due to the challenges of current and upcoming traffic demands of future. This paper evaluates two neural networks architectures for recognition of civil airliners in a Video docking system. The networks compared are feedforward neural network and probabilistic neural network. The results are compared by presenting data to neural networks while deforming the shape, adding noise and partly occluding the shape and presenting those angles for which network was not trained.     

An integrated adaptive method for constructing radar images in dual-purpose control systems

This paper is devoted to the problem of improving air traffic management systems and air space monitoring on the basis of prospective methods of processing signals reflected by objects in the course of their tracking by coherent-pulse radar stations with many-frequency probing. The main content of the prospective methods for constructing two-dimensional radar images of aerodynamic aircraft is presented. An integrated adaptive method for constructing images that combines partial methods is proposed.     

An observation tool to study air traffic control and flightdeck collaboration

The complex systems of the flightdeck (FD) and the Air Traffic Control Centre (ATC) are characterised by numerous concurrently operating and interacting communication channels between people and between people and machines/computer systems. This paper describes work in support of investigating the impact of changes to technologies and responsibilities within this system with respect to human factors. It focuses primarily on the introduction of datalink (text-based communication rather than traditional radio communication) and the move towards freeflight (pilot-mediated air traffic control). Air traffic management investigations have outlined these specific changes as strategies to enable further increases in the volume of air traffic. A systems approach was taken and field studies were conducted. Small numbers of domain experts such as air traffic controllers (ATCOs) were involved in the field-based observations of how people interact with systems and each other. This paper summarises the overall research approach taken and then specifically reports on the field-based observations including the justification, development, and findings of the observation tool used. The observation tool examined information propagation through the air traffic control-flightdeck (ATC-FD) system, and resulted in models of possible information trajectories through the system.     

Effect of Pilot and Air Traffic Control Experiences and Automation Management Strategies on Unmanned Aircraft Systems Mission Task Performance

The demand for Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UASs) capabilities is rapidly increasing in the civilian sector. UAS operations, however, will not be carried out in the National Airspace System until safety concerns are alleviated. Among these concerns is determining the appropriate level of automation in conjunction with a suitable pilot who exhibits the necessary knowledge, skills, and abilities to safely operate these systems. This research examined two levels of automation: management by consent (MBC) and management by exception (MBE), in conjunction with pilot experiences while operating an unmanned aircraft simulator. The user experiences encompass three individual groups: pilots, air traffic controllers (ATC), and non‐pilot/non‐ATCs. Performance, workload, and situational awareness data were examined. Results show no significant differences among pilot experiences groups, automation strategies, or the interaction between these two. Limitations and design implications are discussed to help pave the way for future research. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Formal testing for separation assurance

In order to address the rapidly increasing load of air traffic operations, innovative algorithms and software systems must be developed for the next generation air traffic control. Extensive verification of such novel algorithms is key for their adoption by industry. Separation assurance algorithms aim at predicting if two aircraft will get closer to each other than a minimum safe distance; if loss of separation is predicted, they also propose a change of course for the aircraft to resolve this potential conflict. In this paper, we report on our work towards developing an advanced testing framework for separation assurance. Our framework supports automated test case generation and testing, and defines test oracles that capture algorithm requirements. We discuss three different approaches to test-case generation, their application to a separation assurance prototype, and their respective strengths and weaknesses. We also present an approach for statistical analysis of the large numbers of test results obtained from our framework.     

一类无冲突轨迹规划方案

在新一代空中交通管理自动化系统实施方案中,航迹规划模块在基于航迹的航空器运行过程中扮演着重要角色.为了在大流量、高密度和小间隔条件下获取多航空器无冲突轨迹,针对不同的航路空间分布结构,基于航路冲突点保护区竞争机制,构建了空域多航空器极大代数耦合模型和多航空器冲突预调配模型,根据管制间隔约束建立了模型输入、状态和输出之间的约束关系.采用调整航空器过冲突点时刻和初始放行时刻两种策略,提出了一种多航空器轨迹规划优化模型.算例分析表明,所提出的多航空器轨迹规划模型可行有效.     

Switching Motion Control of Aircraft Skin Inspection Robot Using Backstepping Scheme and Nussbaum Disturbance Observer

International Journal of Control, Automation and Systems - In this paper, a backstepping control using switching strategy is proposed for the motion control of the aircraft skin inspection robot...     

Cooperative surveillance systems and digital-technology enabler for a real-time standard terminal arrival schedule displacement

As the backbone of Communications, Navigation and Surveillance Systems for Air Traffic Management (CNS/ATM), Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast (ADS-B) is a surveillance technology and digital-technology enabler relying on the Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS). The onboard ADS-B Out system broadcasts the aircraft’s real-time digital information such as position and ground speed periodically (every 0.5–2 s), which is more frequent than the radar system. Taking this advantage, situational awareness and flight efficiency can be highly improved. In this paper, a novel heuristic search method based on ADS-B is proposed for the Aircraft Landing Problem (ALP) with the objective of reducing flight time while maintaining the time separation standards mandated by the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO). The recorded ADS-B data in Shanghai Hongqiao and Pudong international airports are adopted to demonstrate the performance of the proposed method. Results show that there is an obvious decrease in the total flight time. Besides, the heuristic search method can achieve continuous and real-time ALP updates, satisfying the requirements for air traffic control. While highlighting ADS-B-based applications, this study also provides some basic implications for the updated model in air traffic management.     

Black-box Optimization of PID Controllers for Aircraft Maneuvering Control

International Journal of Control, Automation and Systems - In this paper, we propose a new method for auto-tuning an aircraft maneuvering controller using black-box optimization. Assuming that we...     

LPV Modeling and Tracking Control of Dissimilar Redundant Actuation System for Civil Aircraft

International Journal of Control, Automation and Systems - Dissimilar redundant actuation systems (DRAS) are in practice in advanced aircraft in order to increase reliability and to resolve the...     

Simulating aerodrome handling capacity in terms of Fermi systems given airspace conflicts

A problem of estimating the handling capacity of an aerodrome with one runaway is considered. A model of air traffic management in the airport area is proposed that helps estimate analytically restrictions of its handling capacity associated with intersections of trajectories of aircraft taking off and approaching. The proposed model uses analogy between maximally congested aircraft flow in the aerodrome area and Fermi systems. Choosing the objective functional for estimating optimal aerodrome handling capacity taking into account waiting times of arriving aircraft is discussed.     

一种改进的遗传算法在飞行冲突解脱

随着空中交通流量的增加,空中交通管理系统面临着越来越严重的航线拥挤问题.在自由飞行的环境下,发生冲突的可能性会大大增加,冲突解脱技术成为提高飞行安全与效益的一项关键技术.针对此问题,提出了一种改进的、能够快速准确进行航路规划的遗传算法,与标准遗传算法进行比较,取得了较好的优化效果.     

飞机着陆调度排序算法的设计与实现

航空管制员必须为同时到达的每一架飞机计算着陆时间，使整体费用最小，同时还要注意一些硬性的限制条件。在某一时刻，给定管制员视野内的飞机数量，可以公式化为约束最优化问题，从而应用一定的算法来解决。该文提出了基于分枝定界的飞机着陆调度排序算法——ASAL，实验证明通过该算法能够很好地解决飞机着陆调度优化问题。     

A socio-technical analysis of functional properties in a joint cognitive system: a case study in an aircraft cockpit

Abstract

In a socio-technical work domain, humans, device interfaces and artefacts all affect transformations of information flow. Such transformations, which may involve a change of auditory to visual information & vice versa or alter semantic approximations into spatial proximities from instruments readings, are generally not restricted to solely human cognition. This paper applies a joint cognitive system approach to explore a socio-technical system. A systems ergonomics perspective is achieved by applying a multi-layered division to transformations of information between, and within, human and technical agents. The approach uses the Functional Resonance Analysis Method (FRAM), but abandons the traditional boundary between medium and agent in favour of accepting aircraft systems and artefacts as agents, with their own functional properties and relationships. The joint cognitive system perspective in developing the FRAM model allows an understanding of the effects of task and information propagation, and eventual distributed criticalities, taking advantage of the functional properties of the system, as described in a case study related to the cockpit environment of a DC-9 aircraft.

Practitioner Summary: This research presents the application of one systemic method to understand work systems and performance variability in relation to the transformation of information within a flight deck for a specific phase of flight. By using a joint cognitive systems approach both retrospective and prospective investigation of cockpit challenges will be better understood.

Abbreviations: ATC: air traffic control; ATCO: air traffic controller; ATM: air traffic management; CSE: cognitive systems engineering; DSA: distributed situation awareness; FMS: flight management system; FMV: FRAM model visualize; FRAM: functional resonance analysis method; GF: generalised function; GW: gross weight; HFACS: human factors analysis and classification system; JCS: joint cognitive systems; PF: pilot flying; PNF: pilot not flying; SA: situation awareness; SME: subject matter expert; STAMP: systems theoretic accident model and processes; VBA: visual basic for applications; WAD: work-as-done; WAI: work-as-imagined; ZFW: zero fuel weight     

Design,Modeling and Control of a Simulator of an Aircraft Maneuver in the Wind Tunnel Using Cable Robot

International Journal of Control, Automation and Systems - In this paper, a new controllable simulator is proposed and modeled by which, experimental tests of the aircraft’s models can be...